Despite the (well-known) fact that the RB7 is a logical progression of its successful predecessor RB6, only a few aero changes differentiating the two cars, Vettel believes all major title contenders will start the season on equal footing in 2011.
“Everyone starts with zero points so everyone has the same chance to win the world championship this year,” said Vettel in Valencia, while echoing the comments of his teammate Mark Webber, who insisted that motivation will not be an issue within the Red Bull organization this season.
“It will be a tough battle and a long hard fight so I think we need to focus again and motivation is not a problem. (...) We have to try to defend it (the world title), but we have to develop from how we were last year otherwise we do a step back and the others pass us. We have to stay focused and try learning every day and try to get better otherwise.”
“Naturally that is what the others do after they got defeated last year, they try to get better, so if we approached the year the same as last year we would not move forward, so we need to try to move forward again.”
While optimistic of his title chances in 2011 and trustful of a new super-challenger developed by Adrian Newey, Vettel stopped short from making any predictions for the campaign to come.
“As I have said many times now, we have a lot of races this year and a lot of things that will possible change through the season. Even if you start with one of the quickest cars you might be facing a second half of the season with a car that is potentially not quick enough or the other way around, so it is difficult to predict.”
“We had some issues with reliability at the beginning of last year, others had some issues at the end so you might think reliability might be the last potential problem to have but that is how F1 goes sometimes and that is the exciting bit. That is the challenge, at the end of the day.”
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